


proof of existence

by Anonymous



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, it's repliku and replikunort, mentions of Riku - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 14:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17941391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Fakes, replaceable existences. Lives and hearts made only to be snuffed out, made only as a means to an end.





	proof of existence

He comes to violently, as if waking up from a nightmare. He breathes too hard, breathes in too deep. He feels like he’s drowning, suffocating. He feels fingers crawl against his skin, like tendrils of darkness trying to drag him into the abyss; the terrifying place spoken of in stories from when he was younger (it’s not real, those memories aren’t real, it’s all an illusion, but god it still feels real), where his soul is cast into oblivion, eternal damnation, where he is forced to suffer for his— 

“Hey, you alright?”

“Who’s there?!” He whips his head—tries to summon Soul Eater, but he  _ can’t, no _ ,  _ no _ ,  _ no, why _ —to face… the  _ other _ . The original. (Not the  _ real _ one, no. The real one belonged wholly to the light with his friends and his  _ happiness _ . He had his  _ name _ and  _ claim to existence _ . Something  _ he _ would never have.)

“Why are  _ you _ here?” He sneers. 

The other shrugs, “I woke up here with you.” The other offers him a hand to stand up, but he bats it away, standing up on his own, slowly. “I thought I was going to finally fade away, but I’m still here.” For some odd reason, the other is relieved when he says it.

_ Here. _ He doesn’t know where ‘here’ is. It’s empty. “Hmph. Don’t be so sure. For all you know, we could be dead and in Hell.” It’s a vast emptiness, too silent.

The other looks around him, “No, that’s not it. Also, it feels kind of empty to be Hell, don’t you think? I always imagined Hell to be full of flames and the screams of the damned, like those stories Dad used to talk about when we were just a child—”

“Shut up. We never had a childhood.”

The rage and the hatred within him are still there, it almost takes him by surprise. (Some part of him was afraid that he’d lost those emotions too, along with his weapon.) It feels the same way as it always has, like broken shards of glass at the pit of his stomach, at the back of his throat. It’s ugly,  _ it’s ugly _ , but it’s an emotion, it’s a feeling, it’s his and his alone, not the real one’s, not the original’s, and he clings onto it.

The other gives him a look, he doesn’t know what it means and it pisses him off, “Those memories aren’t real for us, but they did happen to him.”

He scowls, “I don’t give a single shit about what happened to him. And you know what? Neither should you.” It’s stupid, how utterly different they are when they both came from the same person. Seriously, how naive can the other be?

“You’re not him, and you never will be.”

“I know that!” 

He hates the look on the other’s face. His face is a scowl, and his eyes—not gold, but teal (yet another thing that differentiates  _ him _ from the real one)—burn. He knows he has the same expression on; because they came from the same person, copied from the same heart, the same body. This is what anger looks like on Riku. This is what anger looks like on them.

Fakes, replaceable existences. Lives and hearts made only to be snuffed out, made only as a means to an end.

“I’ve been here for… a long time.” The other says. “I’ve blindly devoted myself to the existence of one person, even though my memories of her are fake.” The other clenches a fist so hard his hand shakes. “But you know what? I don’t care. Those memories are mine, and they’re a part of me. They’re a part of me that separates me from him, something he could never imitate.”  _ And a part of me that you can’t imitate either, _ is left unsaid.

“At least you have that,” he hisses bitterly. What does he have as a claim to his existence? His rage towards the real one? His anger for being made only for the sake of a war he never wanted to be a part of? The darkness that he can’t even summon anymore, a darkness that was never really his, to begin with?

Everything about him was borrowed. His heart was never real. He didn’t even have memories he could call his own. There was only ever silence and darkness, emptiness, when he wasn’t out causing torment to the guardians of light. And even then, the reason why he did that wasn’t out of his own desire. He did it because that was the old man’s will.

His heart was never his own. No matter how many times his blows hurt the real one during their fight, he couldn’t fully convince himself of his realness. He hated it. In the depths of his borrowed, fabricated heart, he hated it.

He thought that, maybe, after he was defeated… he’d disappear, along with the aching void inside him.

He couldn’t even have that.

“Why am I still here?”

“Huh?” The other looks at him in confusion.

“I’m nothing. I’m just a fake, a replica. I’ve done my part, haven’t I? So why am I still here?”

The other’s look of confusion slowly morphs into something else. He doesn’t know what it is. He’d never made such an expression like that before, and his fake memories tell him that the real one never looked like that either.

Was that a smile in his eyes?

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

* * *

“You’re not making any sense.”

The Riku Replica smiled at his companion. The other guy’s feeling was understandable. He felt the same way the first time he ended up here.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i love both repliku and replikunort and i want them back? except not norted for replikunort  
> maybe hopefully we get a name for them both???  
> i've been thinking something like daichi for repliku and kazuki for replikunort to fit the whole earth theme.... but it sounds so,,,,
> 
> also this is a little hc of mine that after reverse/rebirth once repliku's heart disappeared, he woke up in the final world and that's why here he's like "oh wow i'm here again, so i get another chance? again? cool" ~~i know it's a miracle you can even get into the final world with your sense of self and consciousness intact but sssshhh~~
> 
> just imagine repliku and repliku2 coming back to the realm of light and riku has to deal with not one but two hearts inside him: "hey diz, i mean, ansem the wise? can i ask for two replicas?" "what ever for, riku?" "tweedledumb and tweedledumber are fighting over the groceries inside my head and i can't hear myself think." "oh, that certainly is a problem. we'll do our best to help."


End file.
